✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
On this Mission Sunday, I am happy to be home again to tell the take of my missionary journey to Mendoza, Argentina; and to thank you for your prayers and support. But first I must thank you for all of your participation in our Rosary Sunday, which made the beautiful Mass and procession and breakfast and talk to be such a success.

I thank particularly our Confraternity Breakfast Speaker, Fr. McGuire, who related the always interesting story of a young levite and his budding vocation, and the steps which led him to God’s altar. But I wish also to thank Father for doing the Corner last week replete with the McGuire “Coat of Arms!”) It’s always so good to hear about our absent brethren, yesterday’s active and today’s still devoted Gertrudians. Some of you visit our seniors as well, and how welcome you are.

My missionary trip was a long and in some ways a difficult one, but all passed in safety, and with promising spiritual fruit. The people served by the Missionaries of the Most Holy Rosary in that dry and dusty Province of Mendoza, tucked near the Andes Mountains, are mostly quite poor, but enriched by recovering their traditional Catholic faith and Mass. Thanks to the tireless efforts of their two priests, some 150 souls or more have been salvaged from the Novus Ordo or Protestantism, or nothing at all.

I found the people to be very close to their priests, sharing what little they had, and eagerly learning more each day. While the collection basket never overflows (Argentinians are used to the government supporting the Church, both directly and indirectly) and the people have lost all knowledge of giving Mass stipends, still they support their clergy, sometimes in kind with food and wine, and daily by kindly providing them with rides, as they cannot afford a car. This close cooperation maintains a real family-like atmosphere, with everybody being a missionary one way or another, and all praying together.

Friday’s Forty Hours feast with its All Night, all weekend adoration affords us would-be missionaries of the north, the opportunity to recharge our spiritual batteries, to rest and be refreshed in the Divine Presence, to ask and thus to receive the graces of conversion, healing, return to the Sacraments and all the rest which we need. Don’t be distracted, don’t be deceived, one visit to the Blessed Sacrament, one Mass of devotion these days of “The Prayer,” are of immense value, and your for just showing up. Come and adore and implore, repair and return thanks.

Fr. Cekada reports the new seminarians are settled in nicely, and pursuing their studies. Dorothy is keeping them well fed. Fr. McKenna performed a wedding in Duluth, Minnesota this month, as the Northern missions continue to grow and expand. Yesterday he led a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of St. Maria Goretti in Milwaukee. Fr. McGuire led the Rosary process last Tuesday in Milwaukee, and later fill us in on all of the news of our Milwaukee friends. Fr. Lehtoranta is having a very busy teaching year here at our school, and especially enjoys teaching history.

The relics of St. Maria Goretti (hers is the statue in church over the organ) will be displayed at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Columbus on Wednesday. Our school is making a pilgrimage to venerate this modern martyr of purity and forgiveness, beginning with the Votive High Mass of St. Maria Goretti at 8:25 AM. You are welcome to join us for any or all of this wonderful, once in a lifetime, opportunity.

Our little candles glowed blue against the mellow October night on the 13th for our final Fatima Rosary Procession for Peace. Thank you to all who came and prayed, and to so many who came from so far, who came every month, and who overcame disabilities and dark and goose droppings publicly to pray Mary’s Rosary. All very penitential, all such powerful prayer!

Thanks to the persevering investigations and persistent prodding of Brendan, our unwelcome guests of the last few years, the raccoons and any other critters, have been evicted from the church. Gino has sealed the holes with some kind of uncongenial insulation which the raccoons do not care for. This should keep them out, and enable us to pray in peace.

Thanks to your generosity for the special second collection last Sunday, Fr. Cekada is no longer being driven crazy, and the Fathers have a nice safe car to drive around in as they visit the sick and do the meal shopping, and go to the airport and everything else we do. God bless you!

God bless you, and may your Angel remind you to come and pray with us next weekend. Come Friday night, and say for some chili. Come and pray.

–Bp. Dolan

This entry was posted
on Saturday, October 17th, 2015 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Announcements.